The board ran out with four hearts and Larry did NOT have the right Ace. Vincent held the King of hearts to take the gigantic pot. Larry was busted in 38th place ($2,133) and Adam was left short-stacked.

After that pot, Vincent was way up over 5 million chips. There are only 42.95 million chips in play and Vincent has more than 11% of all the chips in play with 37 players remaining.

Vishal got all-in pre-flop against Gordon Eng. Vishal held pocket Aces and was way ahead of Gordon's pocket 4s. An Ace on the flop was overkill. Vishal doubled to ~1.8 million.

Gordon was all-in for 90k on the next hand (button). Paul Darden called from the small blind and the big blind came along for the ride. On the flop of 8 2 2, Paul checked, the big blind bet, and Paul folded.

The big blind held T2 for trip deuces, but Gordon held pocket 8s for 8s full. The last two came K K and Gordon tripled up to ~300k.

Niko Markatos (sb) bet 200k on the turn with a board of K♦J♥T♦9♦. His opponent on the button tanked, then called.

River was the Q♥, putting a straight on the board. Niko again bet 200k. After some additional tank time, his opponent called. Niko showed 8♦7♦ for the flush. His opponent mucked. Niko chipped up to over 1.6 million.

Former chip leader Billy Braden got his last 280k in holding AQ and got action from a player holding AJ. Unfortunately for Billy, a Jack hit the board and he was busted. He finished in 42nd place, earning $2,133.

Gordon Eng took a coin flip against a shorter stack. Gordon's pocket 6s were slightly ahead of his opponent's AK, but an Ace hit the flop. After shipping the double, Gordon was down to ~1.1 million.

Shortly after that hand, Gordon got moved to another table, landing on the right of Paul Darden. These two pros started off today at the same table and now are together again.

At the end of the level, the 62 remaining players were rewarded with a one hour dinner break. Play will resume at about 8pm.

Gordon Eng is the chip leader with 2.1 million.

Claude the Dealer During Dinner Break

While the players are gone, their chips are still on the tables so dealers continue to push through their rotation, even though the cards are still and the chips are silent. Claude is one of those dealers just pushing in to a table, minus the players.

Steve Ryan (New York, NY) is making his comeback. A little over an hour ago, Ryan was down to ~150k. Now he's back to ~550k.

Steve Ryan

As I watched, Ryan was facing a 62k bet on the river. The board was T 8 2 6 4 and the third heart had fallen on 5th street. Ryan made the call and heard those magic words, "Good call" from his opponent. Ryan showed A6 offsuit for a pair of 6s to take the pot as his opponent mucked.

DJ Whorley (Accokeek, MD) made his last stand with AJ suited and got looked up by the big stack of Billy Braden (Toms River, NJ). Billy was trailing with T9 offsuit, but the board ran out K Q 9 3 3 and Billy paired his 9 to take the pot. He chipped up to ~1.3 million.

Billy Braden

DJ finished in 84th place for $1,200. He finished 3rd in the $1,500 Pot Limit Hold'em event at the WSOP this summer, good for over $91k.

On the next hand, Billy picked up pocket Aces and they held up. He's now up to over 1.5 million.

First in line is Fred Weingart (New Egypt, NJ) who's 120th place finish nets him $1,000. Right behind him is Nick Gibbons (Stratford, NJ), who's last 14k in chips helps him limp across the line in 119th place for the cool grand.

It's got to be tough being the short-stack and having the chip leader on your immediate left. That's the situation Daniel Lombardi (Huntington, NY) found himself in today.

Daniel Lombardi and George Cicak

He had anted and blinded his way down to only 2k in chips. Those went in for his ante (he was in the cutoff seat) and he was all-in before the cards were even dealt. Action folded to chip leader George Cicak on the button, who flat-called. Both blinds came along for the ride and checked down the board of 5 3 2 T 4.

Daniel held Q3 suited for a pair of 3s, but George had an Ace for the wheel to take the pot.

Daniel is today's bubble-boy and was a good sport about it as he left the tournament area.

The remaining 120 players are all in the money and guaranteed to cash for at least $1,000.

With 122 players remaining, they went to hand-for-hand play. Two more must go to reach the money.

A huge hand developed on table 11 between Jeremy Rosen (utg) and George Cicak (Randolph, NJ). Jeremy raised, George 3-bet from the small blind, Jeremy 4-bet, George 5-bet, Jeremy 6-bet (+202k) and George tanked.

Crowd surrounding table 11 during this massive hand

All hands were completed at the other tables with no bust-outs, so a crowd gathered around this table.

George finally decided to move all-in (565k more on top). Both players were very close in chips.

Now it was Jeremy's turn in the tank. He eventually opted to fold (without showing). His six-bet-fold ties the record held by Scott Blackman from the 2010 Spring Poker Open.

At the urging of the surrounding crowd, George showed his hand -- AK suited.

Jeremy was left with ~700k. George claimed the chip lead with over 1.6 million.

The large fields and great values are luring the big game cash players into the Borgata Poker Open. Melissa Burr (Brigantine, NJ) was up all night grinding cash before deciding to enter the Omaha event.

She's just one of the recognizable names at what's turned into an all-star table. On her left is Freddie Rouhani (Gaithersburg, MD) and Eric Siegel (Melville, NY).

Also in the field is Brent Keller (Horsham, PA) who's a three-time WSOP circuit event champion and says, "it's pretty tough to bust out this early in the tournament."

12k starting stacks, limit betting, and split pots sets up a long day at the table.

Table 16 was quite a handful with amateur Frank Piasecki (Tonawanda, NY) in the two seat holding his own, sandwiched between poker pros Gordon Eng (Cliffside Park, NJ) in the one seat and Paul Darden (Hampton, CT) in the three seat.

Gordon Eng and Frank Piasecki

They've now broken table sixteen, so Frank's been moved to a new table away from the pros.

15 tables remain with 135 players. The tension in the room is ratcheting up as they can now smell the money.

David Tawil (Brooklyn, NY) has taken the chip lead with ~1.3 million. He was at table 17, but that table has broken and he landed at table 13 (hope he's not superstitous).

David Tawil

16 nine-handed tables remain leaving 144 players still in the hunt for the money and the top prize of over $140k. Only the final 120 players will take home a piece of the prize pool. Average stack is now over 298k.

Over enthusiasm in the early levels of a tournament can rub players the wrong way, but sometimes its pure joy. Jamal Ghanim, (South Plainfield, NJ) twice in the last 30 minutes, has stood on his chair and shouted after surviving a couple of all ins.

The latest comes while holding A 10 against the Q Q of Scott Eininger (Montebello, NY). Ghanim explodes with, "yes, yes yes!" when he hits trip aces to stay alive.

The players are unfazed and find Ghanim refreshing, "no hard feelings at all, I didn't want to take his $100," says Eininger, who doesn't mind forgoing the bounty he would have gotten for a knockout.

One other player chimes in, "he's good for the table, we don't want him to go."

Play has resumed following a color-up break with blinds of 4k/8k and 1k antes.

Just before the break, Bernard Dominiak (Lower Burrell, PA) opened for 16k. Austen Johnson (Woodsboro, MD) three-bet to 34k, Bernard four-bet for 105k, and Austen five-bet-shoved for another 175k on top.

Austen Johnson

Bernard tanked for a few minutes, then made the call holding pocket Queens. He was way ahead of Austen's JT suited. Austen was at risk of elimination.

The flop came 9 7 6 giving Austen a gutshot, needing an 8. The turn was a Queen, giving Bernard a bigger lead with a set of Queens, but giving Austen more outs with an open-ender.

River was a King, completing the straight for Austen and doubling him up to ~700k. Bernard was left with ~50k after that hand.

As of the break, Bernard was down to ~20k. Austen had lost a little and was down to ~650k.

Austen Johnson was the winner of the Borgata Summer Poker Open Leaderboard promotion, winning his $3,500 entry into the BPO Championship, which begins on September 18(Day 1A)/19 (Day 1B).

** 5pm update: Bernard Dominiak not only held on to make the money, but made it all the way to 94th place, earning $1,067.

Nicolas Markatos (Astoria, NY) raised it pre-flop and got one caller. On the flop of K Q T with two spades, all the chips went in the middle. Nicolas was ahead with AQ of spades for middle pair with flush draw and gutshot straight and straight-flush draws. His opponent held JT offsuit for bottom pair with open-ender.

Nicolas Markatos

Turn was a King giving both players a second pair. River was the Jack of spades, giving Niko the Royal flush for the overkill (he was ahead the whole way) and sending his opponent to the rail.

Niko has made quite a comeback. At 1am on day one, he was down to only 20k with an hour left to play. He finished day one with 223,500 and now is up to just under 400k.

Niko finished 5th in the $170 NL event during the Borgata Winter Open in January 2011, taking home over $11,000.

How To Qualify:
By participating in any Borgata Poker Open event (September 7 - 23, 2011), players will earn points based upon Borgata’s poker tournament leaderboard formula, which takes into consideration three criteria:

Tournament Buy-In Amount

Total Event Entries

Place Finished

Borgata Tournament Leaderboard points are calculated by multiplying the point factors from all three criteria.
The Borgata Tournament Leaderboard will be updated throughout the tournament.
Winners will be announced Monday, September 26:

Poker pros Jonathan Little and Kathy Liebert are two players who have Borgata experience that are on the front lines promoting the glasses along with Humberto Brenes and Hoyt Corkins.

"Players wear sunglasses to hide their eyes, so they don't give off tells and to look cool," says Karoutsos, "but many of their lenses are too dark. Our glasses cut down on the strain and fatigue that can lead to mistakes at the table."

Blue Shark Optics has a variety of looks and styles and their lenses can be inserted into existing frames. And as one of the sponsors of the Borgata Poker Open, Blue Shark Optics is glad that all the winners will be admiring their new hardware with a pair of new glasses.

Richard Leach (Washington, D.C.) drove three hours expecting to see ~60k in his chip bag, instead he found 6k. Two hands later he shrugs his shoulders and is leaving with nothing more than a lesson learned the hard way.

"You can't get upset about it," says the real estate investor, adding with a smile "it was a misunderstanding on both our parts."

The confusion came when the remaining 150 players in the Poker Room were told to bag and tag their chips because they were moving upstairs to the Event Center. Everybody but Leach understood that it was a relocation, not the end of Day 1.

"I was talking to the dealer and I took it as we were ending early, which was great because I got ahead start on something I had to do early this morning," says Leach, who was surprisingly upbeat after hearing he was blinded down from 10 pm to 2 am.

When tournament directors realized Leach was missing and his stack was being blinded off, an APB went out to try and track him down. Announcements in the Event Center and Poker Room went unanswered, while blog posts were floating in cyberspace.

"You can't get mad, all you can do is regroup and start over again. They have tournaments here all the time," Leach says, while eying the satellite schedule to try and qualify for the Championship Event.

As Day 2 kicked off, Leach's 6k was enough to cover his 500 ante on the the first hand and with blinds at 2,500/5,000 was forced all-in from the big blind on the second. After watching David Tawil (Brooklyn, NY) tangle with Cathy Dever (Lancaster, PA) in the side pot, Leach waited until the river to flip over 5♣ 7♥ to seal his fate against Tawil's J♦ J♥.

"I'm definitely talking to the floor (supervisor) next time, and I'm definitely going to be checking the blog every 10 minutes from here on out," says Leach, who's off to hit his favorite slot machine before driving back to D.C.

"You always think how could anybody do something like put chips in their pocket, but now I'm sitting in their shoes."

The Event Center is jamming as Event 2 (NL Bounty) is underway, Event 1 (NL) players are finding their seats and unpacking their chips, and Event 3 (Omaha) is anxiously awaiting to kick off the first non No Limit of the series.

The early list of notables includes a lot of formidable woman players, include Jamie Kerstetter (Monroe Township, NJ) who's fresh off her cash in the WSOP Main Event.

Kerstetter is a tough local player who's joined forces with three other women who formed the "Grindettes." Their website states, "4 passionate, hard-working & intelligent girls who defy the odds on a daily basis by playing poker for a living."

Players are in filing in and taking their seats for the first bounty tournament of the 2011 Borgata Poker Open. A lot players bought their black chips in advance so there haven't been any lines at the chip carts.

There's no re-entry in this event so there's a serious vibe as there are no second chances.

Paul "the Truth" Darden has been around the felt all his life. He was born in Connecticut and learned the game long before "the Boom" brought poker mainstream.

His father owned a small poker club and taught him how to play 7 Card Stud before he could drive a car. Paul has been a professional poker player for over a decade and has close to 2 million dollars in tournament winnings to show for it.

He sits with 271,000 chips heading into Level #16, best of luck to the long time tournament veteran.